Chapter 38: I Nearly Break Johnny Depp's Heart and Spirit

In my experience, every time you get swept away in passionate lustful sex with a film star like Johnny Depp, you lose five hours during which you should have been running for your life. We were naked, sweat-soaked, staring into each other’s eyes, and realising this disaster in tandem. But the realisation that we should have been running for our lives was not the worst realisation we were realising, because Johnny Depp was realising that there was some problem with the Teacher, who he worshipped, and I was realising that the Teacher was the one who originally persuaded Johnny Depp not to kill me.

‘The Teacher didn’t help you escape?’ said Johnny. ‘What happened to him.’

‘I was supposed to be drugged,’ I said, ‘but the Teacher switched what was in the syringes so I could move around and find out about the London headquarters. And it was because I wasn’t drugged that I could escape, so the Teacher definitely DID help me escape.’

‘Don’t bullshit me, Mary Sue.’ Johnny Depp’s face was hardening, withdrawing. ‘How did you escape without the Teacher’s help?’

‘I’m pretty plucky,’ I said. Johnny didn’t appreciate it. I carried on, lying desperately. ‘The Teacher said for me to go ahead, and to tell you not to wait.’ For some reason, I still wasn’t saying that the Teacher was a woman. Miss Smallbone had never wanted anyone to know. She would be reincarnating, presumably, but it would be years before she was useful again, and by then the war for the world would be over. Unless Johnny Depp killed me, and stopped the enemy using me to open the Gates of Hell, which I was terrified he would do as soon as he found out the Teacher was dead.

‘No,’ said Johnny. ‘You’re lying.’

‘No, I’m not.’

‘This is not a game, Mary Sue! Tell me what happened, tell me right now, and we might just survive. Do you have any idea of what is going on? This is about the fate of the world, and you are sitting there telling me lies for…’

‘The Teacher is dead.’ Johnny Depp sat back, stunned. ‘The Teacher is dead,’ I repeated.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I thought you would kill me.’ He looked even more stunned. ‘You and Ewan McGregor wanted to kill me.’

‘Ewan died trying to protect you,’ he hissed, suddenly cold. ‘And so did my wife.’

‘I saw a video. I saw you saying it was better if I were dead. It was only the Teacher who persuaded you to keep me alive.’

‘When was…’ he stopped. ‘But that was in London when… They were watching me then? We’d only just found out that you’d married a demon!’

‘I didn’t know!’

‘I know that now. But then, we didn’t know what to think. The Teacher is dead?’

‘Yes.’ I explained how I had been told that the demons had found an Angel who had wormed into the heart of their HQ, and how I knew that it was the Teacher, even though they didn’t, and how Victoria Beckham had tortured the intruder to death while I escaped by various pieces of luck and miracle. While I spoke Johnny Depp was dressing, so so was I. While I put on my shoes, I said quietly, ‘And I saw Rollo Price.’

‘Rollo who? Wait, what? The policeman? From London?’

‘He arrived at the mansion just before I escaped. And there was a picture of him in the Master’s safe. Do you know why?’ Johnny Depp shook his head slowly. ‘I had to escape before the Master arrived,’ I said. ‘I mean, that’s why I didn’t escape earlier, and I only ran because they captured the Teacher. But what if I didn’t escape before the Master arrived? What if… I mean. All along, what if Rollo has been…’ I couldn’t finish.

‘I don’t know,’ said Johnny Depp.

‘Would it be sensible for you to kill me?’ I asked.

‘We’re not going to kill you. We were scared when we found out about your husband. We thought it meant you were one of them. But unless you take their side, we’ll never turn on you. We are who we are. We can’t do what the enemy would do in our position, or what’s the point of all this?’ He sounded profoundly unconvinced by what he was saying. He handed me the gun I’d stolen while I was escaping, and only at that very moment did I realise how terrifyingly simple it had been to use. I didn’t want it, but Johnny wasn’t in a mood to brook argument. While I turned it over in my hand, he made a phone call. As soon as he connected, he said, ‘Code 4. We are executing Talisman. Forty minutes. Prepared? Good. Thank you. What? No, the Teacher will not be present. The Teacher … the Teacher has opted to remain undercover.’ Johnny looked at me and said, ‘It wouldn’t help to tell them. Hope is too important. Are you ready?’ I nodded, and he strode towards the bike. But I didn’t move. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘Don’t you have hope?’ I asked.

His eyes were blank. ‘What I’ve got,’ he said, ‘is a plan. For now, that’s what enough to focus on. The Teacher says that hope is not something that ever dies, whatever you think. When you think it’s gone, you keep moving, and eventually you find it again.’

For twenty minutes we thundered through the orange California night, half on-road, half off-road. The most exciting bit was going up a ramp and over a big barbed wire fence. We were in the grounds of some huge house with a private airport, with an aeroplane whose engines were already running. This was nothing like Johnny’s lovely private jet. It was black, and it had a surface like sandpaper. Its wings were all funny shapes. It looked like it came from the future. Inside, it was utilitarian. When we took off, the sensation of speed was unlike anything I had ever experienced. ‘We’re be safe in here,’ said Johnny Depp. ‘No one will know where we are. You can sleep. It’s impossible for anyone to contact us for the next six hours unless they know a secret code known only to me and the Teacher.’
***

Four hours later, on this supposedly super secret radio, I was listening to the Master say, ‘Turn back Mary Sue. Turn back right now. It’s your only hope.’